MTV is showing its crow’s feet. Those are wrinkles around the eyes for you younger readers. Here’s a franchise that blazed new trails in music, thanks to video, and has now lost much relevance. They are into many, many things today: cable TV programming, video games, movies, online portal content — I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a consumer food product in there somewhere.
The MTV Awards has been flagging in viewership the last few years and this is their biggest chance each year to be relevant. And relevant in a core business way.
Some say MVT has lost touch with kids’ media consumption habits, missing the boat in online video and social networking. I completely agree. As TV and computer morph together, you have to know that MTV wasn’t paying close attention. MySpace became the online venue of choice for small and mid-size bands. YouTube became the purveyor of online videos. And the next video platform is still being figured out and I don’t think it will have an MTV brand associated with it. (Sadly, this will be a pay-for service.)
This was, and is, all MTV’s turf. A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Volkswagen should have owned the small car, energy efficient vehicle market. It was a natural. They missed the boat too. MTV can turn its sh*t around, but it needs to hurry.
